Vietnam & Cambodia are the bank! For 2018 we're catching the blog up and heading back to Europe.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

The Dead Sea(son) - by Juli

After 24 hours en route, we finally made it to Jordan. We arrived in Amman after midnight and picked up the Hertz rental car for the one hour drive to the Dead Sea. We got to the resort, yes, I said resort (check out the picture) and crashed for 12 hours. Very unlike us (on both counts). The resort was free thanks to Todd's six months in New York, and also due to the fact there were a total of about 25 other people there. It was fantastic, we spent a whole day hanging by the pool and floating in the Dead Sea - probably the best way to beat any jet lag. You can actually lie down on the water and read a book or magazine as your body is extra-buoyant due to the high salt content of the water. The Dead Sea is the most salinic body of water (31%) and is also at the lowest altitude on Earth (-400m below sea level). The mud and water is supposed to have healing powers. Not sure about that, but I felt great after that lazy day. Even Todd enjoyed rubbing the mud on himself.

The next day we got on the road and went to Wadi Mujib Nature Reserve to do a quick two hour hike. Todd wanted to do the 4 or 6 hour hike, but it wasn't available because of Ramadan (guides are required for the longer hikes there). Bummer ;) These "hikes" are little different though - they are on "wet" trails; it was a hike through a river (walk upstream, attempt to float downstream) in a siq (natural chasm formed from tectonic plates). At a few points we were up to water at our waists and using ropes to climb over rocks, but it was all worth it for the beautiful views and waterfall at the end. Unfortunately the water level was a bit too low to do some proper canyoning/floating, but we enjoyed trudging through anyway.

After Wadi Mujib we got on the road to head to Wadi Musa to visit Petra. We stopped at one castle (Karak Castle) on the way, it was built by Crusaders in the 1100s and a decent chunk of it still stands! Karak, however, is not the easiest city to navigate and we made many stops to ask for directions. Other than the 4 or 5 armed guard check points and not knowing if we were going the right direction, the drive was pretty uneventful. Up next, Petra. . .